JOHN Howard placed a wreath at the cafe where 12 diners died in 15 seconds. He passed a teddy bear and three bunches of flowers where a mother and her daughters fell because they ran the wrong way.

He felt the lone­liness of the place and its legacy of misery. He had carried a ­nation’s disbelief since Sunday afternoon, three days earlier, when his press secretary, Tony O’Leary, rang at his new lodgings, Kirribilli House, and told him to “flick on your TV”.

Yet an idea was forming, a notion that skirted the why of 35 deaths and instead sought to tackle the how.

The “sheer, windy, grim desolation” of Port Arthur opened a sad day. Later, the nation watched, paused and gulped at images beamed from a memorial service at St David’s Cathedral in Hobart. There, Mr Howard met Dr Bryan Walpole on the steps.

Dr Walpole and his medical team had identified Nanette Mikac and her daughters ­Alannah, 6, and Madeline, 3.

As Mr Howard approached, Dr Walpole glimpsed Walter Mikac in the gathering. Mr Mikac held a rose. He teetered with grief and it was catching. The sight set Dr Walpole to wobbling and weeping.

The next few moments would reveal a side Mr Howard had kept hidden for 22 years of public life, an instinct beyond the scope of spin.

He didn’t know he had the quality until that moment, yet it would become a signature of his leadership, a strength to be conceded by his critics.

“It seemed the most natural thing in the world to give him a hug,” the former prime minister now says of meeting Dr Walpole. “I found then and I found subsequently that when you’re dealing with grief or with people who are emotionally affected by death or serious injury you must never be standoffish and awkward in their presence because they need your help.”

Mr Howard took something else from the encounter. His resolution was sealed, his idea fully formed. Long had he fretted at Australia’s tendency to “copy” American cultural influences. He was determined mass shootings would no longer be among them.

At 74, and seven years out of politics, Mr Howard now chats without the wariness of a working parliamentarian.

There’s still that jaunty way, the throw of a cheery hello to strangers who wave from afar. His eyes harden at the mention of Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams, a man he refused to meet. He refers to rural conservatives who boosted Pauline Hanson’s One Nation as “flannel shirts”.

His understated way says he isn’t a partisan player anymore, well, not in this non-election year, anyway. And perhaps Mr Howard’s most enduring legacy has nothing to do with economic credentials or party divides. Perhaps it was set six weeks into his 11-year rule, when he was untested, and when he boasted glasses and (mostly) brown hair, and when the bywords of the Howard era – GST, Tampa and economic prosperity – had yet to be forged.

“I still get people who stop me and say that was the best thing you ever did,” he says of his gun laws.

Mr Howard, a practical politician, makes it sound simple.

There was no option. Port Arthur, at the time, represented the largest civilian massacre by one person. It was two months after 17 died in the Dunblane school shooting in Scotland.

Mr Howard can still recall then British PM John Major’s message of sympathy.

A ban on semiautomatic weapons, as used by Martin Bryant at Port Arthur, and all automatic weapons, was “just the right thing to do”.

Yet it wasn’t simple at all. Gun laws were state laws. ­Decent people would lose liberties they’d long enjoyed. And gun owners, especially in the bush, were generally conservative voters. Advisers told Mr Howard he was “biting off more than I could chew”.

“There’s never any political mileage in gratuitously ­declaring war on your own followers,” he says. “That’s madness. You only antagonise them if the cause of the antagonism is in the national interest. And this clearly was.”

By the night of his Tasmania visit in 1996, Mr Howard had flagged his intention. His chief adviser, Grahame Morris, offered to background the media if Mr Howard did not intend to pursue full bans.

Mr Howard told him not to, that he did not care how “rocky and difficult” the path ahead. He fronted up to speak to “grumpy” rural shooters. His one “mistake”, he says, was while addressing a Sale rally. Police had warned of a death threat and Mr Morris had told Mr Howard: “How am I going to explain it to [wife] Janette if it happens?”

Mr Howard wore a bulletproof vest, as advised, and it bulged under his jacket like a spare tyre. Crowd members later said the sight of it enraged them.

“I never did it again,” Mr Howard says. “I never felt threatened.”

Part of the memorial at Port Arthur.Source: News Corp Australia

At the same time, Mr Howard was being accosted for other reasons. On Sydney streets he would be greeted on his daily walk with comments such as: “I’ve never voted for you in my life and I’m never likely to but I agree with you on this.”

He let it be known he would push the issue to a referendum if the states did not agree – believing a referendum would vindicate him. A gun buyback was announced. A levy would be applied after a “five second” discussion with treasurer Peter Costello. More than 700,000 firearms, an estimated fifth of a national stockpile, were destroyed.

“The footage of all those guns being collected and crushed was terrific,” Mr Howard says.

The new laws were devised, debated and implemented in less than four months. Outraged gun-owners flooded the media at the start of the hand-in process. A decade later, shooters still expressed “disgust” at a “kneejerk” reaction to a crazed act.

Even now, some tell Mr Howard about the prized possession they had to give up. He waves away the gripes, saying there “was no alternative”.

For Mr Howard, in the numbness of 1996, change was a path he was obliged to steer.

“The country was reeling, it really was reeling in disbelief,” he says. “And I’m sure it would have felt let down if I hadn’t had a go.”

The plainest of statistics appear to bear out the effort.

Nationally, there had been 13 mass shootings in the 18 years before the 1996 reforms. There had been none since.

Mr Howard bats away a question about whether his handling of Port Arthur ­defined, as one commentator has suggested, the rest of his prime ministership. That’s for others to judge.

As for personal political achievements? “Every time people talk about my legacy, they mention guns,” he says.

Comments on this story

Ken Wright of Sandy Bay Posted at 3:16 AM September 29, 2014

The biggest question still is why Rundle ignored his legal obligations and refused to hold a Coronial inquiry into that event. The following is from the Magistrates Court of Tasmania:
Coronial Division
Role Of The Coroner
The Coroner is required by law to inquire into all reportable deaths where a person:
1. has died a violent, unnatural or unexpected death, or as a result of an injury or accident; etc
Rundle decided to ignore this law for his own reasons and there was no sense of closure for Port Arthur.

Ian Bartle of Upper Rosny Posted at 11:19 AM May 11, 2014

3/2 [Sorry Mr. Ed - I have one more point to add, so beg your indulgence.]
@James Loring - The victims of April 1996 do not own the event or discussion around it any more than the victims of 9/11 own that tragic event. More people die in single event crashes involving trains, buses and planes on an annual basis. There's an awful lot of grief in the world every day. It was the manner of how the 35 P.A. deaths occurred that was both truly shocking and 'newsworthy' - and it still is. Sandy Hook is not that long ago, though admittedly it has more in common with Dunblane. IN more recent times we read of tragic shootings at US military bases as well as soldier suicide. This should not be 'shut down' in the press, if it shames the Gov't - it is the truth of the situation. It should not surprise that so many in America who would change the US stance on gun ownership look to the achievements of Australia and ask the inevitable question: what would it take to achieve such change and indeed political consensus to effect it in the US? This, James Loring, is just one of many wider questions around Port Arthur, and it's most definitely a political question, as well as a legal and societal one.

Ian Bartle of Upper Rosny Posted at 11:07 AM May 11, 2014

2/2 William Spence Comment 4 - you raise an interesting question, though I concede the full answer might not be for public consumption on compassionate grounds. Comments 5 and 6 are abject ill-considered rubbish. James L - the historical fact is that the events at Port Arthur required and received a political response. The legacy of that response is one we are all still living with, and after a return to Liberal Govât at both state and federal level, it is not drawing a long bow to revisit questions about how appropriate the response was, whether it was effective and the relative merits of 'antagonising' one's own constituency. I thought Howardâs use of the phrase âin the national interestâ most telling and very relevant to this month's political landscape. I found this article from Patrick Carlyon very good in the various issues (and comments) it raises.